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Accountants Jump Into the Immigration Debate

Major accounting firms and the industry’s trade group are trying to convince Congress to include accounting as part of the ‘STEM’ career fields

Newly sworn-in U.S. citizens recite the Pledge of Allegiance during a naturalization ceremony. Many companies argue that the H-1B visa program is vital to helping them tap a wider pool of workers with specialized skills, but critics say H-1B has fostered outsourcing, helping companies replace or forgo U.S. workers in favor of lower-paid foreign workers
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SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Accounting is both art and science—but in a bid to help more foreign accountants work in the U.S., it is the science part that the accounting industry wants to emphasize.

Major accounting firms and the industry’s trade group are trying to convince Congress to include accounting as part of the “STEM” career fields—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Those areas get special consideration when the U.S. government determines which foreigners get visas to work in the U.S.

Specifically, the industry wants to expand the STEM definition of “mathematics” to include accounting. The efforts by firms and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants are cited in recent lobbying disclosure reports filed with Congress.

The accounting-industry push underscores the degree to which the immigration debate isn’t just about illegal immigrants and the low-skilled jobs they take—it is also about highly skilled, technical jobs and how many foreigners the U.S. should allow to fill them.

President Trump has called for scaling back the H-1B visa program for high-skilled “guest workers,” who are largely in STEM disciplines. Many companies, particularly in the tech industry, argue that the program is vital to helping them tap a wider pool of workers with specialized skills, but critics say H-1B has fostered outsourcing, helping companies replace or forego U.S. workers in favor of lower-paid foreign workers.

Accounting firms said they aren’t seeking lower-paid workers, rather they want the best employees for their needs, wherever they are from. The AICPA said in a statement that the industry has “encouraged Congress to consider the future demand for certified public accountants, or CPAs, as it considers immigration reform.”

Accounting firms need “global mobility” for their personnel to work with multinational companies with operations both in the U.S. and abroad, the group said. Beyond immigration, having the prestige and attention of STEM could help attract more people into accounting, the AICPA said.

Some observers are skeptical. “I think it is a stretch to include accounting as one of the STEM disciplines,” said
Ronil Hira,
an associate professor of political science at Howard University who studies high-skilled immigration and outsourcing.

Mr. Hira says the accounting firms are in fact using the H-1B program to bring lower-paid accountants from abroad into the U.S. The big accounting firms’ approved applications for H-1B visas show they are predominantly for jobs in the lowest wage category, essentially entry-level wages, according to a compilation by Mr. Hira of U.S. Labor Department data for 2015 applications that he furnished to The Wall Street Journal.

“The companies see this as highly profitable. The fact that it undercuts U.S. accountants isn’t part of their calculations for decision-making,” Mr. Hira said.

A spokeswoman for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said most of the firm’s H-1B hires received entry-level pay not because the firm was trying to save money, but because they were hired right out of school. The other Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte & Touche LLP, KPMG LLP and Ernst & Young LLP—declined to comment on the industry’s STEM lobbying, deferring to the AICPA’s statement.

It wouldn’t appear that accountants are in short supply in the U.S. In fact, U.S. colleges are turning out more accounting graduates than accounting firms are hiring.

According to AICPA figures, 81,782 people received U.S. bachelor’s or master’s degrees in accounting in the 2013-14 academic year, the most recent figures available. But only 43,252 of those degree holders were hired by CPA firms.

Accountants said the labor market is tight for students with CPA-ready skills. So “it is understandable that the public accounting firms would weigh in on this immigration issue,” said
Terry Warfield,
a University of Wisconsin-Madison accounting professor.

While accounting remains centered on how and when companies should record their income and expenses, their assets and liabilities, in recent years the industry has focused increasingly on advanced technology and “big data,” bringing it a bit closer to STEM. Accounting-firm executives note that STEM already includes fields that are close to accounting like statistics and applied mathematics.

“Looking at things that are and have been considered STEM, we kind of looked at it and the advantages that come with it and said, ’why not accounting?’” said
Roz Brooks,
PwC’s public policy leader.

The industry has actually been pressing the issue for several years. In 2013, for instance, the AICPA pushed to include accounting in STEM as part of an immigration-reform effort. But that provision didn’t make its way into the reform bill that passed the Senate; that bill died anyway when the House of Representatives failed to take it up.

Still, any attempt by the industry to bring in more foreign accountants will probably face pushback. “I think that when the industry makes these cases, they should be viewed with a lot of skepticism,” said
Steven Camarota,
director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors reduced immigration.

If accounting were to be included in STEM, it could help foreign students who get accounting degrees at U.S. colleges and universities work in the U.S. longer after they graduate. Under immigration authorities’ Optional Practical Training program, foreign students can stay in the U.S. for a year after they get their degree, but students with STEM degrees can stay for three years.

STEM degrees aren’t required for H-1B visas per se, but data from U.S. immigration authorities suggest more than 80% of the visas go to workers in the computer industry and other scientific and technical fields. So inclusion in STEM might give the accounting industry a boost.